About the author

Theresa Laurence is an award-winning journalist with 20 years of experience identifying and telling stories that matter.

She is currently working on her first full-length manuscript, about the life of Sister Sandra Smithson, SSSF, a Black Franciscan nun from Nashville, and the intersecting history of the Black Catholic community in Middle Tennessee. The book is forthcoming from the University of Tennessee Press.

She is a contributing author to the book, Tennessee’s New Abolitionists: The Fight to End the Death Penalty in the Volunteer State, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2010.

During her two-decade tenure as a staff writer at the Tennessee Register, Laurence was the three-time winner of the Catholic Media Association’s Writer of the Year award and won numerous other awards for writing and photography during her journalism career. Her work was regularly featured in national publications including National Catholic Reporter and Catholic News Service.

Laurence first met Sister Sandra while reporting on her work to launch Nashville’s first public charter school. Conversations quickly grew beyond the immediate topics, stretching back to Nashville in the 1930s, Latin America in the 1960s and everything in between and beyond. It became clear that Sister Sandra’s fascinating life story should be recorded and preserved, which led to to the book collaboration.

I am grateful for Sister Sandra’s generous gift of time in sharing her story with me and look forward to sharing it with a wider audience soon!